An Authoritative Voice: Jane Addams and the Oratorical Tradition

Oratory, the act of speaking in public on civic matters, remained a male prerogative in the United States until the 1830s, when increasing numbers of women began ignoring the taboo and established a female oratorical tradition. This essay outlines how American women claimed the authority to speak and then developed their tradition, which was a social reform in itself, over three generations. It then examines how the youthful Jane Addams, a member of the third generation who became a social reformer, gained her education as an orator and struggled in new ways with society’s continuing doubts about women's civic authority.     

Processional walking: Theorising the ‘place’ of movement in notions of dwelling

This article rethinks dwelling as an active and emergent process through which (re)connections to place are valorised by humans collectively walking with each other in a recursive manner. We revisit Heidegger's notion of dwelling, often criticised for perpetuating enclosure and stasis, by revealing the interconnections between dwelling and movement. Drawing on a two‐century old religious procession—the Manchester and Salford Whit Walks—as an empirical example, our interpretive analysis is centred around three themes. First, we demonstrate how dwelling becomes embodied in performative and collective movement. Second, we examine how dwelling in this context is reinforced through repetition and iteration of that movement. Third, we show how such movement is reliant on repair and maintenance work, which facilitates the (re)emergence of dwelling. We contribute, therefore, empirical insights into how dwelling emerges from a movement through place which, in turn, cements a being in place. Finally, this article has important implications for thinking about how the movement of citizens through processional forms of walking can be a powerful tool for underpinning feelings of dwelling and related concepts of sense of place and civic pride.     

Ajrakh: From Caste Dress to Catwalk

Ajrakh is a double-sided, block-printed textile worn as caste dress by cattle herders in the desert regions of Kachchh and Thar in north-west India and Sindh in Pakistan, where it is made by Khatri artisans. Readily identified by its distinctive combination of geometric and floral designs, traditional ajrakh is notably printed on both sides of the cloth and is dyed with indigo and madder. In the past forty years ajrakh has not only been transformed from a rustic block print into a popular fashion fabric, it has also become the signature cloth of the Khatri communities at Dhamadka and Ajrakhpur in Kachchh and is their most successful product. This article analyses the interventions that led to the successful adaptation of ajrakh as a regional product to a modern design milieu. It discusses early government initiatives that resulted in the introduction of artisan-designer collaborations in the 1970s, as well as later design developments that were led by Indian and foreign entrepreneurs. It traces the continuing trajectory of ajrakh from rural western India to the catwalks of New Delhi, Mumbai and beyond. Case studies of three fashion companies illuminate the factors that have influenced the commercial ascent of ajrakh. This textile is also considered in respect of recent initiatives to organise and protect the craft sector by the Government of India and by non-governmental organisations. In a final section, the article appraises the value of ajrakh as both a successful commodity and a cultural asset.     

Beyond ‘Crisis’ in Understanding Gender Transformation

Since the late 1980s, historians have described certain eras as marked by ‘crisis’ in the production of gender norms. At the outset, the concept of ‘gender crisis’ proved useful for understanding changes in normative cultural systems. The rhetorical trope of crisis distinguished key turning points in the construction of gender and helped to shape a coherent narrative centred on moments of breakdown and reconstruction. Unfortunately, however, the concept of ‘gender crisis’ has now outlived its usefulness; it has lost its analytic purchase. This article reviews the notion in modern, American and European historiography, then critiques its usefulness as an analytic concept. ‘Gender crisis’ has been overworked to the point of semantic collapse. It has been so reified as to foreshorten analysis, and it conceptualises masculinity as a fixed set of essentialised norms. Finally, ‘gender crisis’ describes subjectivity and its relation to normative systems in overly binary and mechanistic terms. Using the case study of postwar French masculinity, the author proposes the alternative concept of ‘gender damage’ as a way to understand periods of transformation in gender. The term ‘gender damage’ moves beyond a mechanistic notion of interaction with normative systems in order to incorporate such emotions as frustration, humiliation and confusion in our thinking of human subjectivity. In addition, the term forces us to specify exactly which gender norms are being reconfigured in some way. ‘Damage’ is by nature specific and local because it does not totalise catastrophe in the same way as does ‘crisis’.     

Identifying sites at risk from illicit metal detecting: from CRAVED to HOPPER

Archaeological sites are at risk from acquisitive crime: this paper focuses in particular on illicit metal detecting. The effects of theft in this context are not merely financial, but have devastating impact on our knowledge and understanding of the site. Even where items are later recovered, we lose the vital clues about the precise context of an object. We therefore need to reduce the risk of theft occurring in the first place.

This paper draws on case studies from England and presents a new methodology to assess which archaeological sites may be at risk from illicit metal detecting: ‘HOPPER’ identifies the characteristics of sites likely to be targeted by offenders looking for antiquities. In brief: History (a history of finds at the site); Open (the site has physical public access, and/or is documented in the public domain); Protection (protected status can act as a beacon for offenders); Publicity (site is known about or receiving new attention); Evasion (there are known ways to escape apprehension); and Repeat victimisation (The site has been a target before). The impact of HOPPER will be its use in the field to develop a pragmatic risk assessment applicable both in a local and international context.     

The Servilia tomb: an architecturally and pictorially important Roman building

One hundred and eleven samples from the important Servilia Roman tomb have been analysed for the first time by Raman spectroscopy, resulting in a complete characterisation of the pigment palette used for its remarkable wall paintings: 73 different pigment mixtures have been identified for the composition of its 11 colours and their tonalities. Dyer’s weld, an ancient organic yellow pigment, which was described by Vitruvius, has been identified and characterised for the first time in Roman wall paintings. Distinctive Raman spectroscopic signals which differentiate between haematite and caput mortuum (a violet colour from haematite which has been subjected to thermal treatment) are also reported. The use of the very expensive lazurite for a balance relates the importance of this otherwise ordinary instrument with psychostasia (the human soul weighing process) and is not found elsewhere in the tomb. The distribution of white minerals alone or in admixture is not related to any particular colouring pigment or figure; this possibly indicates that there was no specific use for each white mineral and that several craftsmen worked on the paintings, perhaps in different periods, or that the frescoes have been subjected to unrecorded restoration. We conclude that Raman spectroscopy is a valuable analytical technique for the unambiguous identification of mixtures of both organic and inorganic compounds, to study the degree of mineral crystallinity and for identifying treatment. These data are relevant for the holistic interpretation of the artwork in its historical, economical and social context.     

The Seasonal Mobility of Prehistoric Gazelle Herds in the Azraq Basin,Jordan: Modelling Alternative Strategies Using Stable Isotopes

The hunting of Gazella subgutturosa was a dominant practice for Epipalaeolithic and early Neolithic hunter–gatherers in the east Jordan steppe. The seasonal mobility of this taxon in the Levant is poorly understood, especially for early prehistory when herd movements would have influenced hunter-gatherer use of the steppes. This paper proposes four patterns of seasonal herd mobility for G. subgutturosa centred on Jordan’s Azraq Basin. The four patterns are modelled using oxygen, carbon and strontium stable isotopes. Seasonal environmental signatures of each are understood through carbon and strontium isotopic variation in sixty modern plant specimens collected from twelve selected locations in north Jordan, published data on oxygen isotopes in local precipitation, and the adaptive behaviour of G. subgutturosa. The integrated isotopic datasets provide clear discriminatory markers for each proposed mobility pattern. Results will be applied in future to isotopic data from archaeological gazelle teeth from the Azraq Basin.